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24 Sep 2024
Gamma : Placetel deal closure - Buy

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Gamma : Placetel deal closure - Buy
Gamma Communications PLC (GAMA:LON) | 998 59.9 0.6% | Mkt Cap: 919.3m
- Published:
24 Sep 2024 -
Author:
Julian Yates | Roger Phillips -
Pages:
6 -
Gamma announced the completion of the Placetel acquisition yesterday, and so we expect this to now be included within consensus estimates. We had already included it for FY25E-FY26E assuming c.10% EBITDA margin and leave these years unchanged on P&L, but tweak up FY24E marginally for a Q4 contribution, which is fairly de minimis at the profit level.
Placetel has been a coveted asset for some time as a standalone within Cisco, not having a legacy voice business to slough off unlike Gamma’s other European deals. The logic of becoming co-market leader in Germany with c.300k cloud PBX seats alongside NFON, in a market 1.5x the size of the UK on most metrics but with very low cloud PBX penetration (and relatively basic products at this stage of evolution) is sound; interims commentary suggested Gamma still remains active in M&A terms.
Consideration has not been detailed, and no upfront cash certainly helps accretion calculations, but as per before, we think the prize is really in the group’s existing Cisco licensing commitment being broadened and expanded (perhaps 50m / 5 yrs as a guesstimate), with Gamma having principally been using Broadsoft soft-switching technology within Horizon already.
A shorthand is therefore that the trade-off is scaling up in Germany and improving the European growth rate, in exchange for substituting the Collaborate unified comms upsell module for Webex, where we assume Gamma is assuming the role of key channel champion and cheerleader (with a lot of licences to sell through). Collaborate was only ever SME-focused with a decent attach rate, so this looks a sensible trade to us, albeit the group product strategy being heavily married to Cisco’s product roadmap effectively for the rest of the 2020s is a subtlety to be watched.
We retain our Buy and up our TP slightly to reflect 12x FY25E EBITDA.